BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (106 page)

When she’d cried it out, she got up and found the bag she’d unpacked a week ago. She folded her clothes neatly and packed them in, taking care that nothing stayed behind. She wanted to get back to where there were people. She wanted to get back to where there was a life waiting for her.

She walked out of the cave two hours later, wearing a thick jacket and hiking shoes, and hoping to god she would make it down the mountainside alive. She had no idea which way they’d come to the cave, which trail Bruce had used. But she followed her own logic. If she kept moving downward until she cleared the trees she would be in the valley. And if she walked to the right and kept going, eventually she would reach Williamstown.

It shouldn’t be that hard.

She had a knife on her that she’d taken from the drawer in the make-shift kitchen. She had matches on her that she could use to make a fire, and a cloth she could wrap around a branch to make a torch. She tried to convince herself that it would be enough to keep wild animals away. To keep shifters away.

She took a deep breath, smelling the trees and the water and the snow that was in the air now, coming her way, and then headed toward the trees where the ground sloped down the most.

She was going home.

Chapter 5

Bruce left the cave and he was determined to put a stop to it. The entire week he’d been wrestling with the idea of Tara wanting to kill Jenna, kill the village, kill everything that wasn’t shifter, just because she wanted to keep them safe. It had bothered him so much he’d had trouble sleeping, had trouble eating, had trouble just being with Jenna.

He’d been trying all week to work out some sort of plan, and nothing had worked because at the end of it, it seemed impossible to find any kind of answer to his problem.

He was setting out now to make his opinion known once and for all, to stand up against Tara and challenge her if that was what it came down to. She was scary as hell and he stood a chance of dying if he lost against her, but losing Jenna and everyone else in Williamsburg would be worse.

That would kill him slowly even if Tara stayed in control and he was in everyone’s favor.

No, it had to come to an end.

He walked through the trees, trying to get his thoughts together. He had arguments that he was going to throw at Tara, arguments that he’d been working on all week. Whether she was human enough to understand logic was a different question, but it was worth a shot. Besides, this wasn’t just about their safety because of Jenna.

It went a lot deeper than that.

He reached the plateau before he was ready. The Family was gathered and they were itching for blood and fights. That happened closer to full moon. Bruce could feel the heat under his own skin, too, the urge to let loose and let the animal run free. But that wasn’t going to happen.

He took a deep breath and pushed himself through the trees, putting one foot in the other until his feet had carried him to the circle where the others stood. They looked at him like they expected something. Maybe it was the expression he wore on his face.

“You can’t kill the village off,” he said, starting it off right away. Waiting for the appropriate time to say it was going to have him waiting forever, and the longer he waited the less courage he would have.

Tara’s anger flared and the heat rose like that of a giant flame as it did. Her eyes were white almost immediately and it looked like the others took a step back, but Bruce wasn’t sure. He kept his eyes on Tara.

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” Tara asked and her voice was annoyed, like she was getting sick of the same topic. But despite the irritated tone of her voice, Bruce could feel the danger in it crawl up his arms. He fought the urge to shudder visibly.

“I know you’re trying to save us by killing them,” he said. Maybe showing her that in some ways they agreed would soften her up. She made a deep rumbling sound at the back of throat that had no place coming out a woman’s mouth, but Bruce knew it was the leopard, and it was growling at him. She didn’t buy it.

“If you’re going to stick up for that human one more time…” she started, but her sentence tapered off when Bruce shook his head. Still, her face changed, her nose pushing forward and her teeth realigning them along the new jaw. A moment later and fur was going to appear, Bruce knew. He swallowed and kept talking.

“If we take out the village with the Assassins so close, they’re going to find us anyway. They’re going to find us because of it. You’re going to put us in even more danger.”

Tara’s mood was volatile, Bruce could feel it. He kept his voice gentle, tried to talk her through it without a fight starting. He was willing to sacrifice himself for Jenna if it came down to it, but he wanted to try everything else first before laying down and dying.

“There will be no minds left to scrub if they’re all dead,” Tara said and her voice had become lower. The leopard was on its way out. Shit.

If Bruce didn’t wrap this up soon he wasn’t going to be able to get around to his point. Tara was on the edge of losing it. It was like she was on the other end of the line this time, as if she needed an alpha to help her keep control. Either that or she was in a really bad mood. That had happened before.

“There are other ways for the Assassins to keep track of shifters as well,” he said. Tara narrowed her eyes at him. He took it as a sign to keep going. “’Like news reports and police investigations. A mass murder like that is bound to draw human attention, and slaughters like that draw Assassins too.”

Tara glanced around the circle at the other Family members. Lori was the first to nod.

“It makes sense,” she said. It was the first time she’d taken Bruce’s side, and he was surprised. But then Stephen also agreed, and then Cleveland.

“If the humans come across a mass killing and the Assassins identify it as animal kills they’ll be all over this area for sure,” Stephen said.

Tara opened her mouth and hissed, showing Bruce her teeth. She started pacing around, as if the movement would subdue the raw energy inside of her.

“Let me get this straight,” she said while moving. The way she used her body was like she was a leopard already, with elegance and power and stealthy. “You marry a human, and she finds out who you are, putting us in danger. Because you’re mated to her we can’t attack her, and then you want to hide her instead of just killing her. And now you tell me that I can’t kill any of them, because that will endanger us more than you already have?”

Putting it like that it didn’t sound very good, but that was what he was saying. After thinking about it a moment, he nodded. Tara looked at Dwayne and walked closer to him, her eyes on his like he was prey. Bruce would have expected the man, only a human, to wince and cower, but he didn’t. Then again, for someone who could foresee the future, he would know if he was going to die.

“And what do you think about all this?” she asked him. He swallowed, the only sign that there was fear at all, and then he nodded. “Bruce is right. By killing all of them, it will kill all of us.”

Tara groaned and spun around, storming away from the group.

“How the hell am I supposed to deal with this?” she asked and her voice was raised. “
You
,” she flung around and pointed at Bruce with a  long bony finger with a black crooked nail at the end of it, “you have made this really impossible for me.”

Bruce opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly he became aware of what he was feeling. He stopped trying to formulate the words, stopped trying to say what he meant. He focused on the feeling around him. He listened, strained his ears for sounds all around him, but everything was fine. Nothing was stalking them. He reached out his feelers, tried to look for human life close by that could be a threat. Nothing.

The Family had noticed his reaction and they were listening too. The pack had fallen so quiet it was like they weren’t there, the only sound was the wind through the leaves.

Bruce couldn’t find what the problem was, but something was wrong. It made him uncomfortable, not knowing what was bothering him. He felt hollow, like something was missing. The Family started fanning out, looking with their eyes for what they couldn’t hear, for what they couldn’t feel. They were going by his reaction. Nothing of their own, somehow he knew that.

And then Bruce realized what was wrong. He couldn’t feel Jenna. The bond was broken. She was gone, a hole in his chest where she belonged. He hadn’t felt her for a while, and his body had finally gotten the message through.

“Oh no,” Bruce mumbled. The others came closer again, looking at him with concerned faces.

“What is it?” Cleveland asked, but Bruce didn’t answer him. Instead he turned and ran into the trees shouting her name.

He weaved through the trees, fear eating away at him, his worst nightmares of losing her chasing him, pushing him to go faster and faster. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a man or a bear, which would be faster, but he couldn’t find it in himself to change even if he wanted to.

He was able to travel the distance from the cave to the plateau and back easily in a night. It wasn’t that far, not for his speed and stamina. But running to her, knowing something was wrong, it felt so much further than it had ever been. It felt like Bruce was never going to be able to reach it.

Vaguely he became aware of a bird flying overhead, he could feel the animal although he couldn’t hear anything through the thundering of his own heart and the wheezing of his lungs.

His muscles screamed at him when he finally crashed through the trees and into the clearing. It was bathed in moonlight and the cave entrance was like a black yawn in the mountainside. He ran inside.

“Jenna!” he shouted. There were no candles but his night vision was enough to tell him she wasn’t there. The cave was empty, no candle light, no warmth of her body. He went over to the bed and patted the covers just to be sure. He even looked under it, like an idiot. There was nothing.

He came to a standstill in the middle of the cave, with the make-shift home pressing against him like it was smaller than it really was. Through his panic and his fear he couldn’t think straight. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. With the breath he breathed in through his nose, tried to find a scent of whatever had taken her.

Nothing. He was so damn worked up he couldn’t do anything.

He walked out of the cave again and jammed his hands into his hair, looking up into the night sky. It was riddled with stars, pinpricks of light in the inky canvas that stretches over the world. And the moon was almost full. It was so close it could almost have been full already.

“She’s not here, Bruce,” a voice spoke in the darkness and Bruce spun round, coming face to face with Cleveland. Dimly he remembered the bird that had kept up with him. Cleveland almost glowed in the moonlight, his pale skin reflecting the light all around him.

“Where is she?” Bruce asked, like Cleveland should have known the answer to that. He shrugged.

“I don’t know where she is, but I can tell you now there is no human around here, and there is no scent.”

Bruce rubbed his face with his hands. “I thought that was just me, panicking too much to smell anything.” He took a deep breath and tried to blow it out slowly again so that he wouldn’t hyperventilate. “At least, that was what I’d hoped for. I don’t have a trail now.”

“Did Tara do this?” Bruce asked. Cleveland hesitated just a fraction of a second before he shook his head, but that was enough to set Bruce off again. He moved toward the shifter so fast there was no time for him to react, and Bruce grabbed him around the neck.

“This was Tara, wasn’t it?” he asked again.

“Bruce, calm down,” Cleveland said, staying calm as if a bear shifter didn’t have him by the throat and was starting to unravel. “You were with us. We were all in the circle together. None of us had gotten away.”

It took a while for Cleveland’s words to come through, and he had to say it a couple of times, but finally Bruce understood what he was saying. He let go of Cleveland’s neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbled and wondered for a moment if he would leave a bruise.

There were sounds in the trees, like animals approaching, and Bruce felt the adrenaline kick in. He was ready to fight. He would rip the head off every animal that had thought about getting to Jenna. He was just about to drop down and change into a bear when the first animal cleared the trees. It was Stephen. The only reason Bruce realized this was because the moment he came into view, the wolf started shifting.

The others appeared one by one, too. They’d followed Bruce’s trail through the woods to the cave. Rosa, then Lori, and Tara. And, finally, quite some time later Dwayne appeared, too.

“Tell me you didn’t do this,” Bruce said to Tara. She had shifted back into human form, too. She rolled her eyes but then shook her head.

“As much as I would like to take credit for this, no. I didn’t do it. I didn’t touch your human.”

“Then who did?” Bruce asked, and his anger was starting to melt away so that his voice sounded thin and scared. He hated looking and sounding so weak, but with the bond broken and Jenna gone, Bruce felt like a part of him had been ripped away and he was bleeding out.

“I’ve got a scent,” Stephen said, who’d been walking around the trees. “It’s her.”

Bruce rushed over and took a deep breath. Jenna’s scent was strong in his nostrils and kicked himself for not looking for her scent instead of some potentially dangerous animal they could have taken her.

“This way,” Stephen said and he started walking into the trees. The werewolf was like a bloodhound, sure of his footing, sure of the route Jenna had taken. Bruce noticed that she’d walked in a pattern, avoiding fallen trees and piles of leaves that could be hazards for her. It was still dark and she didn’t have the kind of vision they all had.

“How long ago was this?” Bruce asked.

Stephen glanced over his shoulder and he looked annoyed.

“How am I supposed to know that?” he asked. “It’s not like I can smell minutes.”

Bruce nodded. “But it was recently though?” he asked.

Stephen stopped and lifted his head, closing his eyes. “No,” he finally said. “It wasn’t within the last couple of hours, at least. We’d been talking up there for a while before you’d taken off like that, and getting here had taken time too.”

“We have to find her,” Bruce said.

Stephen kept walking, looking irritated that he’d been cut off in what he was trying to say. He came to a stop at the stream that flowed from the top, where Bruce and Jenna had stopped to drink water. Stephen paced around, working in a zig-zag pattern like he was trying to find the scent again.